(Nikon D90, 35mm DX, f/5.6, 1/160, ISO 100, Flash @ TTL)
It was perhaps the earliest Project365 photo ever - taken at 12:40 AM Friday morning.
For a while now, I've been mulling over getting a softbox and venturing into the realm of portraiture. Diffusion domes and bouncing off of walls can work, but what if you need more or if you've got a blue wall as is the case in my room? For me, I turned to Lastolite, which produces a compact softbox for hot-shoe flashes. Their appropriately named "Ezybox Hotshoe" comes in 30 x 30, 60 x 60, and 75 x 75 cm sizes. Above is me acting like a jackass in front of the 60 x 60.
There is one thing about it that isn't quite so "Ezy" and that's folding the SOB up. It folds flat all well and good, but when it comes time to crunching that bad boy into a circle? For me, putting one hand on one pointy end and the other in the middle of the opposite edge, then twisting in opposite directions seemed to work best. Don't know how it worked, but it did. Kudos to the guy in Flickr who figured it out. Of course, I only learned this after dicking around with the thing for an hour opening and closing it trying to nail down the routine. I woke up later at around 10ish in the morning to a lot pain in my wrists likely from twisting the damn thing in so many directions. Thankfully, the pain has subsided, but I digress.
I picked up the kit, which contains a light stand, carrying handle (for portable you've-got-some-poor-bastard-to-hold-it-for-you situations). tilthead, and the necessary brackets... oh and a softbox too. I took a few really ad-hoc test shots with it, and already I'm in love with the light. Can't wait to try it on someone besides myself. Hopefully there will be some results soon.
And as a side note, this should hopefully conclude my tardiness/backlog of blog posts that I've neglected to cover until now. Hopefully I'll be able to return to my ~24 hours or less timeframe of posting. Thanks for tolerating my tardiness. :)
More coming.
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